"In the more remote parts of Ireland," Moryson elsewhere says,
where the English laws and manners are unknown, "the very chief
of the Irish, men as well as women, go naked in very winter-time,
only having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and
their bodies with a loose mantle. This I speak of my own
experience." He goes on to tell of a Bohemian baron, just come
from the North of Ireland, who "told me in great earnestness that
he, coming to the house of Ocane, a great lord among them, was
met at the door with sixteen women, all naked, excepting their
loose mantles; whereof eight or ten were very fair, and two
seemed very nymphs, with which strange sight, his eyes being
dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting down by
the fire with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could not
but offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. Soon
after, Ocane, the lord of the country, came in, all naked
excepting a loose mantle, and shoes, which he put off as soon as
he came in, and entertaining the baron after his best manner in
the Latin tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, which he
thought to be a burthen to him, and to sit naked by the fire with
this naked company. But the baron... for shame, durst not put off
his apparel." (Ib. Part 3, Book IV, Chapter II.)
Coryat, when traveling in Italy in the early part of the
seventeenth century, found that in Lombardy many of the women
and children wore only smocks, or shirts, in the hot weather. At
Venice and Padua, he found that wives, widows, and maids, walk
with naked breasts, many with backs also naked, almost to the
middle. (Coryat, _Crudities_, 1611. The fashion of _décolleté_
garments, it may be remarked, only began in the fourteenth
century; previously, the women of Europe generally covered
themselves up to the neck.)
In Northern Italy, some years ago, a fire occurred at night in a
house in which two girls were sleeping, naked, according to the
custom. One threw herself out and was saved, the other returned
for a garment, and was burnt to death. The narrator of the
incident [a man] expressed strong approval of the more modest
girl's action. (Private communication.) It may be added that the
custom of sleeping naked is still preserved, also (according to
Lippert and Stratz), in Jutland, in Iceland, in some parts of
Norway, and sometimes even in Berlin.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague writes in 1717, of the Turkish ladies
at the baths at Sophia: "The first sofas were covered with
cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies, and on the
second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of
rank in their dress, all being in a state of Nature; that is, in
plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect
concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest
gesture among them. They walked and moved with the same majestic
grace which Milton describes of our general mother. I am here
convinced of the truth of a reflection I had often made, that if
it was the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly
observed." (_Letters and Works_, 1866, vol. i, p. 285.)
At St. Petersburg, in 1774, Sir Nicholas Wraxall observed "the
promiscuous bathing of not less than two hundred persons, of both
sexes. There are several of these public bagnios," he adds, "in
Petersburg, and every one pays a few copecks for admittance.
There are, indeed, separate spaces for the men and women, but
they seem quite regardless of this distinction, and sit or bathe
in a state of absolute nudity among each other." (Sir N. Wraxall,
_A Tour Through Some of the Northern Parts of Europe_, 3d ed.,
1776, p. 248.) It is still usual for women in the country parts
of Russia to bathe naked in the streams.
In 1790, Wedgwood wrote to Flaxman: "The nude is so general in
the work of the ancients, that it will be very difficult to avoid
the introduction of naked figures. On the other hand, it is
absolutely necessary to do so, or to keep the pieces for our own
use; for none, either male or female, of the present generation
will take or apply them as furniture if the figures are naked."
(Meteyard, _Life of Wedgwood_, vol. ii, p. 589.)
Mary Wollstonecraft quotes (for reprobation and not for
approval) the following remarks: "The lady who asked the
question whether women may be instructed in the modern system of
botany, was accused of ridiculous prudery; nevertheless, if she
had proposed the question to me, I should certainly have
answered: 'They cannot!'" She further quotes from an educational
book: "It would be needless to caution you against putting your
hand, by chance, under your neck-handkerchief; for a modest woman
never did so." (Mary Wollstonecraft, _The Rights of Woman_, 1792,
pp. 277, 289.)
At the present time a knowledge of the physiology of plants is
not usually considered inconsistent with modesty, but a knowledge
of animal physiology is still so considered by many. Dr. H.R.
Hopkins, of New York, wrote in 1895, regarding the teaching of
physiology: "How can we teach growing girls the functions of the
various parts of the human body, and still leave them their
modesty? That is the practical question that has puzzled me for
years."
In England, the use of drawers was almost unknown among women
half a century ago, and was considered immodest and unfeminine.
Tilt, a distinguished gynecologist of that period, advocated such
garments, made of fine calico, and not to descend below the knee,
on hygienic grounds. "Thus understood," he added, "the adoption
of drawers will doubtless become more general in this country,
as, being worn without the knowledge of the general observer,
they will be robbed of the prejudice usually attached to an
appendage deemed masculine." (Tilt, _Elements of Health_, 1852,
p. 193.) Drawers came into general use among women during the
third quarter of the nineteenth century.
Drawers are an Oriental garment, and seem to have reached Europe
through Venice, the great channel of communication with the East.
Like many other refinements of decency and cleanliness, they were
at first chiefly cultivated by prostitutes, and, on this account,
there was long a prejudice against them. Even at the present day,
it is said that in France, a young peasant girl will exclaim, if
asked whether she wears drawers: "I wear drawers, Madame? A
respectable girl!" Drawers, however, quickly became acclimatized
in France, and Dufour (op. cit., vol. vi, p. 28) even regards
them as essentially a French garment. They were introduced at the
Court towards the end of the fourteenth century, and in the
sixteenth century were rendered almost necessary by the new
fashion of the _vertugale_, or farthingale. In 1615, a lady's
_caleçons_ are referred to as apparently an ordinary garment. It
is noteworthy that in London, in the middle of the same century,
young Mrs. Pepys, who was the daughter of French parents, usually
wore drawers, which were seemingly of the closed kind. (_Diary_
of S. Pepys, ed. Wheatley, May 15, 1663, vol. iii.) They were
probably not worn by Englishwomen, and even in France, with the
decay of the farthingale, they seem to have dropped out of use
during the seventeenth century. In a technical and very complete
book, _L'Art de la Lingerie_, published in 1771, women's drawers
are not even mentioned, and Mercier (_Tableau de Paris_, 1783,
vol. vii, p. 54) says that, except actresses, Parisian women do
not wear drawers. Even by ballet dancers and actresses on the
stage, they were not invariably worn. Camargo, the famous dancer,
who first shortened the skirt in dancing, early in the eighteenth
century, always observed great decorum, never showing the leg
above the knee; when appealed to as to whether she wore drawers,
she replied that she could not possibly appear without such a
"precaution." But they were not necessarily worn by dancers, and
in 1727 a young _ballerina_, having had her skirt accidentally
torn away by a piece of stage machinery, the police issued an
order that in future no actress or dancer should appear on the
stage without drawers; this regulation does not appear, however,
to have been long strictly maintained, though Schulz (_Ueber
Paris und die Pariser_, p. 145) refers to it as in force in 1791.
(The obscure origin and history of feminine drawers have been
discussed from time to time in the _Intermédiaire des Chercheurs
et Curieux_, especially vols. xxv, lii, and liii.)
Prof. Irving Rosse, of Washington, refers to "New England
prudishness," and "the colossal modesty of some New York
policemen, who in certain cases want to give written, rather than
oral testimony." He adds: "I have known this sentiment carried to
such an extent in a Massachusetts small town, that a shop-keeper
was obliged to drape a small, but innocent, statuette displayed
in his window." (Irving Rosse, _Virginia Medical Monthly_,
October, 1892.) I am told that popular feeling in South Africa
would not permit the exhibition of the nude in the Art
Collections of Cape Town. Even in Italy, nude statues are
disfigured by the addition of tin fig-leaves, and sporadic
manifestations of horror at the presence of nude statues, even
when of most classic type, are liable to occur in all parts of
Europe, including France and Germany. (Examples of this are
recorded from time to time in _Sexual-reform_, published as an
appendix to _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_.)
Some years ago, (1898), it was stated that the Philadelphia
_Ladies' Home Journal_ had decided to avoid, in future, all
reference to ladies' under-linen, because "the treatment of this
subject in print calls for _minutiæ_ of detail which is extremely
and pardonably offensive to refined and sensitive women."
"A man, married twenty years, told me that he had never seen his
wife entirely nude. Such concealment of the external reproductive
organs, by married people, appears to be common. Judging from my
own inquiry, very few women care to look upon male nakedness, and
many women, though not wanting in esthetic feeling, find no
beauty in man's form. Some are positively repelled by the sight
of nakedness, even that of a husband or lover. On the contrary,
most men delight in gazing upon the uncovered figure of women.
It seems that only highly-cultivated and imaginative women enjoy
the spectacle of a finely-shaped nude man (especially after
attending art classes, and drawing from the nude, as I am told by
a lady artist). Or else the majority of women dissemble their
curiosity or admiration. A woman of seventy, mother of several
children, said to a young wife with whom I am acquainted: 'I have
never seen a naked man in my life.' This old lady's sister
confessed that she had never looked at _her own_ nakedness in the
whole course of her life. She said that it 'frightened' her. She
was the mother of three sons. A maiden woman of the same family
told her niece that women were 'disgusting, because they have
monthly discharges.' The niece suggested that women have no
choice in the matter, to which the aunt replied: 'I know that;
but it doesn't make them less disgusting,' I have heard of a girl
who died from hæmorrhage of the womb, refusing, through shame, to
make the ailment known to her family. The misery suffered by some
women at the anticipation of a medical examination, appears to be
very acute. Husbands have told me of brides who sob and tremble
with fright on the wedding-night, the hysteria being sometimes
alarming. E, aged 25, refused her husband for six weeks after
marriage, exhibiting the greatest fear of his approach. Ignorance
of the nature of the sexual connection is often the cause of
exaggerated alarm. In Jersey, I used to hear of a bride who ran
to the window and screamed 'murder,' on the wedding-night."
(Private communication.)
At the present day it is not regarded as incompatible with
modesty to exhibit the lower part of the thigh when in swimming
costume, but it is immodest to exhibit the upper part of the
thigh. In swimming competitions, a minimum of clothing must be
combined with the demands of modesty. In England, the regulations
of the Swimming Clubs affiliated to the Amateur Swimming
Association, require that the male swimmer's costume shall extend
not less than eight inches from the bifurcation downward, and
that the female swimmer's costume shall extend to within not more
than three inches from the knee. (A prolonged discussion, we are
told, arose as to whether the costume should come to one, two, or
three inches from the knee, and the proposal of the youngest lady
swimmer present, that the costume ought to be very scanty, met
with little approval.) The modesty of women is thus seen to be
greater than that of men by, roughly speaking, about two inches.
The same difference may be seen in the sleeves; the male sleeve
must extend for two inches, the female sleeve four inches, down
the arm. (Daily Papers, September 26, 1898.)
"At ----, bathing in a state of Nature was _de rigueur_ for the
_élite_ of the bathers, while our Sunday visitors from the slums
frequently made a great point of wearing bathing costumes; it was
frequently noticed that those who were most anxious to avoid
exposing their persons were distinguished by the foulness of
their language. My impression was that their foul-mindedness
deprived them of the consciousness of safety from coarse jests.
If I were bathing alone among blackguards, I should probably feel
uncomfortable myself, if without costume." (Private
communication.)
A lady in a little city of the south of Italy, told Paola
Lombroso that young middle-class girls there are not allowed to
go out except to Mass, and cannot even show themselves at the
window except under their mother's eye; yet they do not think it
necessary to have a cabin when sea-bathing, and even dispense
with a bathing costume without consciousness of immodesty. (P.
Lombroso, _Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1901, p. 306.)
"A woman mentioned to me that a man came to her and told her in
confidence his distress of mind: he feared he had _corrupted_ his
wife because she got into a bath in his presence, with her baby,
and enjoyed his looking at her splashing about. He was deeply
distressed, thinking he must have done her harm, and destroyed
her modesty. The woman to whom this was said felt naturally
indignant, but also it gave her the feeling as if every man may
secretly despise a woman for the very things he teaches her, and
only meets her confiding delight with regret or dislike."
(Private communication.)
"Women will occasionally be found to hide diseases and symptoms
from a bashfulness and modesty so great and perverse as to be
hardly credible," writes Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, an experienced
coroner. "I have known several cases of female deaths, reported
as sudden, and of cause unknown, when the medical man called in
during the latter hours of life has been quite unaware that his
lady patient was dying of gangrene of a strangulated femoral
hernia, or was bleeding to death from the bowel, or from ruptured
varices of the vulva." (_British Medical Journal_, Feb. 29,
1908.)
The foregoing selection of facts might, of course, be
indefinitely enlarged, since I have not generally quoted from any
previous collection of facts bearing on the question of modesty.
Such collections may be found in Ploss and Max Bartels _Das
Weib_, a work that is constantly appearing in new and enlarged
editions; Herbert Spencer, _Descriptive Sociology_ (especially
under such headings as "Clothing," "Moral Sentiments," and
"Æsthetic Products"); W.G. Sumner, _Folkways_, Ch. XI;
Mantegazza, _Amori degli Uomini_, Chapter II; Westermarck,
_Marriage_, Chapter IX; Letourneau, _L'Evolution de la Morale_,
pp. 126 et seq.; G. Mortimer, _Chapters on Human Love_, Chapter
IV; and in the general anthropological works of Waitz-Gerland,
Peschel, Ratzel and others.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The earliest theory I have met with is that of St. Augustine, who
states (_De Civitate Dei_, Bk. XIV, Ch. XVII) that erections of the penis
never occurred until after the Fall of Man. It was the occurrence of this
"shameless novelty" which made nakedness indecent. This theory fails to
account for modesty in women.
[2] Guyau, _L'Irreligion de l'Avenir_, Ch. VII.
[3] Timidity, as understood by Dugas, in his interesting essay on that
subject, is probably most remote. Dr. H. Campbell's "morbid shyness"
(_British Medical Journal_, September 26, 1896) is, in part, identical
with timidity, in part, with modesty. The matter is further complicated by
the fact that modesty itself has in English (like virtue) two distinct
meanings. In its original form it has no special connection with sex or
women, but may rather be considered as a masculine virtue. Cicero regards
"modestia" as the equivalent of the Greek sôphrosunê. This is the
"modesty" which Mary Wollstonecraft eulogized in the last century, the
outcome of knowledge and reflection, "soberness of mind," "the graceful
calm virtue of maturity." In French, it is possible to avoid the
confusion, and _modestie_ is entirely distinct from _pudeur_. It is, of
course, mainly with _pudeur_ that I am here concerned.
II.
Modesty an Agglomeration of Fears--Children in Relation to
Modesty--Modesty in Animals--The Attitude of the Medicean Venus--The
Sexual Factor of Modesty Based on Sexual Periodicity and on the Primitive
Phenomena of Courtship--The Necessity of Seclusion in Primitive Sexual
Intercourse--The Meaning of Coquetry--The Sexual Charm of Modesty--Modesty
as an Expression of Feminine Erotic Impulse--The Fear of Causing Disgust
as a Factor of Modesty--The Modesty of Savages in Regard to Eating in the
Presence of Others--The Sacro-Pubic Region as a Focus of Disgust--The Idea
of Ceremonial Uncleanliness--The Custom of Veiling the Face--Ornaments and
Clothing--Modesty Becomes Concentrated in the Garment--The Economic Factor
in Modesty--The Contribution of Civilization to Modesty--The Elaboration
of Social Ritual.
That modesty--like all the closely-allied emotions--is based on fear, one
of the most primitive of the emotions, seems to be fairly evident.[4] The
association of modesty and fear is even a very ancient observation, and is
found in the fragments of Epicharmus, while according to one of the most
recent definitions, "modesty is the timidity of the body." Modesty is,
indeed, an agglomeration of fears, especially, as I hope to show, of two
important and distinct fears: one of much earlier than human origin, and
supplied solely by the female; the other of more distinctly human
character, and of social, rather than sexual, origin.
A child left to itself, though very bashful, is wholly devoid of
modesty.[5] Everyone is familiar with the shocking _inconvenances_ of
children in speech and act, with the charming ways in which they
innocently disregard the conventions of modesty their elders thrust upon
them, or, even when anxious to carry them out, wholly miss the point at
issue: as when a child thinks that to put a little garment round the neck
satisfies the demands of modesty. Julius Moses states that modesty in the
uncovering of the sexual parts begins about the age of four. But in cases
when this occurs it is difficult to exclude teaching and example. Under
civilized conditions the convention of modesty long precedes its real
development. Bell has found that in love affairs before the age of nine
the girl is more aggressive than the boy and that at that age she begins
to be modest.[6] It may fairly be said that complete development of
modesty only takes place at the advent of puberty.[7] We may admit, with
Perez, one of the very few writers who touch on the evolution of this
emotion, that modesty may appear at a very early age if sexual desire
appears early.[8] We should not, however, be justified in asserting that
on this account modesty is a purely sexual phenomenon. The social impulses
also develop about puberty, and to that coincidence the compound nature of
the emotion of modesty may well be largely due.
The sexual factor is, however, the simplest and most primitive element of
modesty, and may, therefore, be mentioned first. Anyone who watches a
bitch, not in heat, when approached by a dog with tail wagging gallantly,
may see the beginnings of modesty. When the dog's attentions become a
little too marked, the bitch squats firmly down on the front legs and hind
quarters though when the period of oestrus comes her modesty may be flung
to the air and she eagerly turns her hind quarters to her admirer's nose
and elevates her tail high in the air. Her attitude of refusal is
equivalent, that is to say, to that which in the human race is typified by
the classical example of womanly modesty in the Medicean Venus, who
withdraws the pelvis, at the same time holding one hand to guard the
pubes, the other to guard the breasts.[9] The essential expression in each
case is that of defence of the sexual centers against the undesired
advances of the male.[10]
Stratz, who criticizes the above statement, argues (with
photographs of nude women in illustration) that the normal type
of European surprised modesty is shown by an attitude in which
the arms are crossed over the breast, the most sexually
attractive region, while the thighs are pressed together, one
being placed before the other, the shoulder raised and the back
slightly curved; occasionally, he adds, the hands may be used to
cover the face, and then the crossed arms conceal the breasts.
The Medicean Venus, he remarks, is only a pretty woman coquetting
with her body. Canova's Venus in the Pitti (who has drapery in
front of her, and presses her arms across her breast) being a
more accurate rendering of the attitude of modesty. But Stratz
admits that when a surprised woman is gazed at for some time, she
turns her head away, sinks or closes her eyes, and covers her
pubes (or any other part she thinks is being gazed at) with one
hand, while with the other she hides her breast or face. This he
terms the secondary expression of modesty. (Stratz, _Die
Frauenkleidung_, third ed., p. 23.)
It is certainly true that the Medicean Venus merely represents an
artistic convention, a generalized tradition, not founded on
exact and precise observation of the gestures of modesty, and it
is equally true that all the instinctive movements noted by
Stratz are commonly resorted to by a woman whose nakedness is
surprised. But in the absence of any series of carefully recorded
observations, one may doubt whether the distinction drawn by
Stratz between the primary and the secondary expression of
modesty can be upheld as the general rule, while it is most
certainly not true for every case. When a young woman is
surprised in a state of nakedness by a person of the opposite, or
even of the same, sex, it is her instinct to conceal the primary
centers of sexual function and attractiveness, in the first
place, the pubes, in the second place the breasts. The exact
attitude and the particular gestures of the hands in achieving
the desired end vary with the individual, and with the
circumstances. The hand may not be used at all as a veil, and,
indeed, the instinct of modesty itself may inhibit the use of the
hand for the protection of modesty (to turn the back towards the
beholder is often the chief impulse of blushing modesty, even
when clothed), but the application of the hand to this end is
primitive and natural. The lowly Fuegian woman, depicted by
Hyades and Deniker, who holds her hand to her pubes while being
photographed, is one at this point with the Roman Venus described
by Ovid (_Ars Amatoria_, Book II):--
"Ipsa Venus pubem, quoties velamnia ponit,
Protegitur læva semireducta manus."
It may be added that young men of the lower social classes, at
all events in England, when bathing at the seaside in complete
nudity, commonly grasp the sexual organs with one hand, for
concealment, as they walk up from the sea.
The sexual modesty of the female animal is rooted in the sexual
periodicity of the female, and is an involuntary expression of the organic
fact that the time for love is not now. Inasmuch as this fact is true of
the greater part of the lives of all female animals below man, the
expression itself becomes so habitual that it even intrudes at those
moments when it has ceased to be in place. We may see this again
illustrated in the bitch, who, when in heat, herself runs after the male,
and again turns to flee, perhaps only submitting with much persuasion to
his embrace. Thus, modesty becomes something more than a mere refusal of
the male; it becomes an invitation to the male, and is mixed up with his
ideas of what is sexually desirable in the female. This would alone serve
to account for the existence of modesty as a psychical secondary sexual
character. In this sense, and in this sense only, we may say, with Colin
Scott, that "the feeling of shame is made to be overcome," and is thus
correlated with its physical representative, the hymen, in the rupture of
which, as Groos remarks, there is, in some degree, a disruption also of
modesty. The sexual modesty of the female is thus an inevitable by-product
of the naturally aggressive attitude of the male in sexual relationships,
and the naturally defensive attitude of the female, this again being
founded on the fact that, while--in man and the species allied to him--the
sexual function in the female is periodic, and during most of life a
function to be guarded from the opposite sex, in the male it rarely or
never needs to be so guarded.[11]
Both male and female, however, need to guard themselves during the
exercise of their sexual activities from jealous rivals, as well as from
enemies who might take advantage of their position to attack them. It is
highly probable that this is one important sexual factor in the
constitution of modesty, and it helps to explain how the male, not less
than the female, cultivates modesty, and shuns publicity, in the exercise
of sexual functions. Northcote has especially emphasized this element in
modesty, as originating in the fear of rivals. "That from this seeking
after secrecy from motives of fear should arise an instinctive feeling
that the sexual act must always be hidden, is a natural enough sequence.
And since it is not a long step between thinking of an act as needing
concealment and thinking of it as wrong, it is easily conceivable that
sexual intercourse comes to be regarded as a stolen and therefore, in some
degree, a sinful pleasure."[12]
Animals in a state of nature usually appear to seek seclusion for sexual
intercourse, although this instinct is lost under domestication. Even the
lowest savages, also, if uncorrupted by civilized influences, seek the
solitude of the forest or the protection of their huts for the same
purpose; the rare cases in which coitus is public seem usually to involve
a ceremonial or social observance, rather than mere personal
gratification. At Loango, for instance, it would be highly improper to
have intercourse in an exposed spot; it must only be performed inside the
hut, with closed doors, at night, when no one is present.[13]
It is on the sexual factor of modesty, existing in a well-marked
form even among animals, that coquetry is founded. I am glad to
find myself on this point in agreement with Professor Groos, who,
in his elaborate study of the play-instinct, has reached the same
conclusion. So far from being the mere heartless play by which a
woman shows her power over a man, Groos points out that coquetry
possesses "high biological and psychological significance," being
rooted in the antagonism between the sexual instinct and inborn
modesty. He refers to the roe, who runs away from the stag--but
in a circle. (Groos, _Die Spiele der Menschen_, 1899, p. 339;
also the same author's _Die Spiele der Thiere_, pp. 288 _et
seq._) Another example of coquetry is furnished by the female
kingfisher (_Alcedo ispida_), which will spend all the morning in
teasing and flying away from the male, but is careful constantly
to look back, and never to let him out of her sight. (Many
examples are given by Büchner, in _Liebe und Liebesleben in der
Tierwelt_.) Robert Müller (_Sexualbiologie_, p. 302) emphasizes
the importance of coquetry as a lure to the male.
"It is quite true," a lady writes to me in a private letter,
"that 'coquetry is a poor thing,' and that every milkmaid can
assume it, but a woman uses it principally in self-defence, while
she is finding out what the man himself is like." This is in
accordance with the remark of Marro, that modesty enables a woman
"to put lovers to the test, in order to select him who is best
able to serve the natural ends of love." It is doubtless the
necessity for this probationary period, as a test of masculine
qualities, which usually leads a woman to repel instinctively a
too hasty and impatient suitor, for, as Arthur Macdonald remarks,
"It seems to be instinctive in young women to reject the
impetuous lover, without the least consideration of his
character, ability, and fitness."
This essential element in courtship, this fundamental attitude of pursuer
and pursued, is clearly to be seen even in animals and savages; it is
equally pronounced in the most civilized men and women, manifesting itself
in crude and subtle ways alike. Shakespeare's Angelo, whose virtue had
always resisted the temptations of vice, discovered at last that
"modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness."
"What," asked the wise Montaigne, "is the object of that virginal shame,
that sedate coldness, that severe countenance, that pretence of not
knowing things which they understand better than we who teach them, except
to increase in us the desire to conquer and curb, to trample under our
appetite, all that ceremony and those obstacles? For there is not only
matter for pleasure, but for pride also, in ruffling and debauching that
soft sweetness and infantine modesty."[14] The masculine attitude in the
face of feminine coyness may easily pass into a kind of sadism, but is
nevertheless in its origin an innocent and instinctive impulse. Restif de
la Bretonne, describing his own shame and timidity as a pretty boy whom
the girls would run after and kiss, adds: "It is surprising that at the
same time I would imagine the pleasure I should have in embracing a girl
who resisted, in inspiring her with timidity, in making her flee and in
pursuing her; that was a part which I burned to play."[15] It is the
instinct of the sophisticated and the unsophisticated alike. The Arabs
have developed an erotic ideal of sensuality, but they emphasize the
importance of feminine modesty, and declare that the best woman is "she
who sees not men and whom they see not."[16] This deep-rooted modesty of
women towards men in courtship is intimately interwoven with the marriage
customs and magic rites of even the most primitive peoples, and has
survived in many civilized practices to-day.[17] The prostitute must be
able to simulate the modesty she may often be far from feeling, and the
immense erotic advantage of the innocent over the vicious woman lies
largely in the fact that in her the exquisite reactions of modesty are
fresh and vigorous. "I cannot imagine anything that is more sexually
exciting," remarks Hans Menjago, "than to observe a person of the opposite
sex, who, by some external or internal force, is compelled to fight
against her physical modesty. The more modest she is the more sexually
exciting is the picture she presents."[18] It is notable that even in
abnormal, as well as in normal, erotic passion the desire is for innocent
and not for vicious women, and, in association with this, the desired
favor to be keenly relished must often be gained by sudden surprise and
not by mutual agreement. A foot fetichist writes to me: "It is the
_stolen_ glimpse of a pretty foot or ankle which produces the greatest
effect on me." A urolagnic symbolist was chiefly excited by the act of
urination when he caught a young woman unawares in the act. A fetichistic
admirer of the nates only desired to see this region in innocent girls,
not in prostitutes. The exhibitionist, almost invariably, only exposes
himself to apparently respectable girls.
A Russian correspondent, who feels this charm of women in a
particularly strong degree, is inclined to think that there is an
element of perversity in it. "In the erotic action of the idea of
feminine enjoyment," he writes, "I think there are traces of a
certain perversity. In fact, owing to the impressions of early
youth, woman (even if we feel contempt for her in theory) is
placed above us, on a certain pedestal, as an almost sacred
being, and the more so because mysterious. Now sensuality and
sexual desire are considered as rather vulgar, and a little
dirty, even ridiculous and degrading, not to say bestial. The
woman who enjoys it, is, therefore, rather like a profaned altar,
or, at least, like a divinity who has descended on to the earth.
To give enjoyment to a woman is, therefore, like perpetrating a
sacrilege, or at least like taking a liberty with a god. The
feelings bequeathed to us by a long social civilization maintain
themselves in spite of our rational and deliberate opinions.
Reason tells us that there is nothing evil in sexual enjoyment,
whether in man or woman, but an unconscious feeling directs our
emotions, and this feeling (having a germ that was placed in
modern men by Christianity, and perhaps by still older religions)
says that woman _ought_ to be an absolutely pure being, with
ethereal sensations, and that in her sexual enjoyment is out of
place, improper, scandalous. To arouse sexual emotions in a
woman, if not to profane a sacred host, is, at all events, the
staining of an immaculate peplos; if not sacrilege, it is, at
least, irreverence or impertinence. For all men, the chaster a
woman is, the more agreeable it is to bring her to the orgasm.
That is felt as a triumph of the body over the soul, of sin over
virtue, of earth over heaven. There is something diabolic in such
pleasure, especially when it is felt by a man intoxicated with
love, and full of religious respect for the virgin of his
election. This feeling is, from a rational point of view, absurd,
and in its tendencies, immoral; but it is delicious in its
sacredly voluptuous subtlety. Defloration thus has its powerful
fascination in the respect consciously or unconsciously felt for
woman's chastity. In marriage, the feeling is yet more
complicated: in deflowering his bride, the Christian (that is,
any man brought up in a Christian civilization) has the feeling
of committing a sort of sin (for the 'flesh' is, for him, always
connected with sin) which, by a special privilege, has for him
become legitimate. He has received a special permit to corrupt
innocence. Hence, the peculiar prestige for civilized Christians,
of the wedding night, sung by Shelley, in ecstatic verses:--
"'Oh, joy! Oh, fear! What will be done
In the absence of the sun!'"
This feeling has, however, its normal range, and is not, _per
se_, a perversity, though it may doubtless become so when unduly
heightened by Christian sentiment, and especially if it leads, as
to some extent it has led in my Russian correspondent, to an
abnormal feeling of the sexual attraction of girls who have only
or scarcely reached the age of puberty. The sexual charm of this
period of girlhood is well illustrated in many of the poems of
Thomas Ashe, and it is worthy of note, as perhaps supporting the
contention that this attraction is based on Christian feeling,
that Ashe had been a clergyman. An attentiveness to the woman's
pleasure remains, in itself, very far from a perversion, but
increases, as Colin Scott has pointed out, with civilization,
while its absence--the indifference to the partner's pleasure--is
a perversion of the most degraded kind.
There is no such instinctive demand on the woman's part for innocence in
the man.[19] In the nature of things that could not be. Such emotion is
required for properly playing the part of the pursued; it is by no means
an added attraction on the part of the pursuer. There is, however, an
allied and corresponding desire which is very often clearly or latently
present in the woman: a longing for pleasure that is stolen or forbidden.
It is a mistake to suppose that this is an indication of viciousness or
perversity. It appears to be an impulse that occurs quite naturally in
altogether innocent women. The exciting charm of the risky and dangerous
naturally arises on a background of feminine shyness and timidity. We may
trace its recognition at a very early stage of history in the story of Eve
and the forbidden fruit that has so often been the symbol of the masculine
organs of sex. It is on this ground that many have argued the folly of
laying external restrictions on women in matters of love. Thus in quoting
the great Italian writer who afterwards became Pope Pius II, Robert Burton
remarked: "I am of Æneas Sylvius' mind, 'Those jealous Italians do very
ill to lock up their wives; for women are of such a disposition they will
mostly covet that which is denied most, and offend least when they have
free liberty to trespass.'"[20]
It is the spontaneous and natural instinct of the lover to desire modesty
in his mistress, and by no means any calculated opinion on his part that
modesty is the sign of sexual emotion. It remains true, however, that
modesty is an expression of feminine erotic impulse. We have here one of
the instances, of which there, are so many, of that curious and
instinctive harmony by which Nature has sought the more effectively to
bring about the ends of courtship. As to the fact itself there can be
little doubt. It constantly forces itself on the notice of careful
observers, and has long been decided in the affirmative by those who have
discussed the matter. Venette, one of the earliest writers on the
psychology of sex, after discussing the question at length, decided that
the timid woman is a more ardent lover than the bold woman.[21] "It is the
most pudent girl," remarked Restif de la Bretonne whose experience of
women was so extensive, "the girl who blushes most, who is most disposed
to the pleasures of love," he adds that, in girls and boys alike, shyness
is a premature consciousness of sex.[22] This observation has even become
embodied in popular proverbs. "Do as the lasses do--say no, but take it,"
is a Scotch saying, to which corresponds the Welsh saying, "The more
prudish the more unchaste."[23]
It is not, at first, quite clear why an excessively shy and
modest woman should be the most apt for intimate relationships
with a man, and in such a case the woman is often charged with
hypocrisy. There is, however, no hypocrisy in the matter. The shy
and reserved woman holds herself aloof from intimacy in ordinary
friendship, because she is acutely sensitive to the judgments of
others, and fears that any seemingly immodest action may make an
unfavorable opinion. With a lover, however, in whose eyes she
feels assured that her actions can not be viewed unfavorably,
these barriers of modesty fall down, and the resulting intimacy
becomes all the more fascinating to the woman because of its
contrast with the extreme reserve she is impelled to maintain in
other relationships. It thus happens that many modest women who,
in non-sexual relationships with their own sex, are not able to
act with the physical unreserve not uncommon with women among
themselves, yet feel no such reserve with a man, when they are
once confident of his good opinion. Much the same is true of
modest and sensitive men in their relations with women.
This fundamental animal factor of modesty, rooted in the natural facts of
the sexual life of the higher mammals, and especially man, obviously will
not explain all the phenomena of modesty. We must turn to the other great
primary element of modesty, the social factor.
We cannot doubt that one of the most primitive and universal of the social
characteristics of man is an aptitude for disgust, founded, as it is, on a
yet more primitive and animal aptitude for disgust, which has little or no
social significance. In nearly all races, even the most savage, we seem
to find distinct traces of this aptitude for disgust in the presence of
certain actions of others, an emotion naturally reflected in the
individual's own actions, and hence a guide to conduct. Notwithstanding
our gastric community of disgust with lower animals, it is only in man
that this disgust seems to become transformed and developed, to possess a
distinctly social character, and to serve as a guide to social
conduct.[24] The objects of disgust vary infinitely according to the
circumstances and habits of particular races, but the reaction of disgust
is fundamental throughout.
The best study of the phenomena of disgust known to me is, without doubt,
Professor Richet's.[25] Richet concludes that it is the _dangerous_ and
the _useless_ which evoke disgust. The digestive and sexual excretions and
secretions, being either useless or, in accordance with widespread
primitive ideas, highly dangerous, the genito-anal region became a
concentrated focus of disgust.[26] It is largely for this reason, no
doubt, that savage men exhibit modesty, not only toward women, but toward
their own sex, and that so many of the lowest savages take great
precautions in obtaining seclusion for the fulfillment of natural
functions. The statement, now so often made, that the primary object of
clothes is to accentuate, rather than to conceal, has in it--as I shall
point out later--a large element of truth, but it is by no means a
complete account of the matter. It seems difficult not to admit that,
alongside the impulse to accentuate sexual differences, there is also in
both men and women a genuine impulse to concealment among the most
primitive peoples, and the invincible repugnance often felt by savages to
remove the girdle or apron, is scarcely accounted for by the theory that
it is solely a sexual lure.
In this connection it seems to me instructive to consider a special form
of modesty very strongly marked among savages in some parts of the world.
I refer to the feeling of immodesty in eating. Where this feeling exists,
modesty is offended when one eats in public; the modest man retires to
eat. Indecency, said Cook, was utterly unknown among the Tahitians; but
they would not eat together; even brothers and sisters had their separate
baskets of provisions, and generally sat some yards apart, with their
backs to each other, when they ate.[27] The Warrua of Central Africa,
Cameron found, when offered a drink, put up a cloth before their faces
while they swallowed it, and would not allow anyone to see them eat or
drink; so that every man or woman must have his own fire and cook for
himself.[28] Karl von den Steinen remarks, in his interesting book on
Brazil, that though the Bakairi of Central Brazil have no feeling of shame
about nakedness, they are ashamed to eat in public; they retire to eat,
and hung their heads in shame-faced confusion when they saw him innocently
eat in public. Hrolf Vaughan Stevens found that, when he gave an Orang
Laut (Malay) woman anything to eat, she not only would not eat it if her
husband were present, but if any man were present she would go outside
before eating or giving her children to eat.[29] Thus among these peoples
the act of eating in public produces the same feelings as among ourselves
the indecent exposure of the body in public.[30]
It is quite easy to understand how this arises. Whenever there is any
pressure on the means of subsistence, as among savages at some time or
another there nearly always is, it must necessarily arouse a profound and
mixed emotion of desire and disgust to see another person putting into his
stomach what one might just as well have put into one's own.[31] The
special secrecy sometimes observed by women is probably due to the fact
that women would be less able to resist the emotions that the act of
eating would arouse in onlookers. As social feeling develops, a man
desires not only to eat in safety, but also to avoid being an object of
disgust, and to spare his friends all unpleasant emotions. Hence it
becomes a requirement of ordinary decency to eat in private. A man who
eats in public becomes--like the man who in our cities exposes his person
in public--an object of disgust and contempt.
Long ago, when a hospital student on midwifery duty in London slums, I had
occasion to observe that among the women of the poor, and more especially
in those who had lost the first bloom of youth, modesty consisted chiefly
in the fear of being disgusting. There was an almost pathetic anxiety, in
the face of pain and discomfort, not to be disgusting in the doctor's
eyes. This anxiety expressed itself in the ordinary symptoms of modesty.
But, as soon as the woman realized that I found nothing disgusting in
whatever was proper and necessary to be done under the circumstances, it
almost invariably happened that every sign of modesty at once
disappeared.[32] In the special and elementary conditions of parturition,
modesty is reduced to this one fear of causing disgust; so that, when that
is negated, the emotion is non-existent, and the subject becomes, without
effort, as direct and natural as a little child. A fellow-student on
similar duty, who also discovered for himself the same character of
modesty--that if he was careful to guard her modesty the woman was careful
also, and that if he was not the woman was not--remarked on it to me with
sadness; it seemed to him derogatory to womanhood that what he had been
accustomed to consider its supreme grace should be so superficial that he
could at will set limits to it.[33] I thought then, as I think still, that
that was rather a perversion of the matter, and that nothing becomes
degrading because we happen to have learned something about its
operations. But I am more convinced than ever that the fear of causing
disgust--a fear quite distinct from that of losing a sexual lure or
breaking a rule of social etiquette--plays a very large part in the
modesty of the more modest sex, and in modesty generally. Our Venuses, as
Lucretius long since remarked and Montaigne after him, are careful to
conceal from their lovers the _vita postscenia_, and that fantastic fate
which placed so near together the supreme foci of physical attraction and
physical repugnance, has immensely contributed to build up all the
subtlest coquetries of courtship. Whatever stimulates self-confidence and
lulls the fear of evoking disgust--whether it is the presence of a beloved
person in whose good opinion complete confidence is felt, or whether it is
merely the grosser narcotizing influence of a slight degree of
intoxication--always automatically lulls the emotion of modesty.[34]
Together with the animal factor of sexual refusal, this social fear of
evoking disgust seems to me the most fundamental element in modesty.
It is, of course, impossible to argue that the fact of the sacro-pubic
region of the body being the chief focus of concealment proves the
importance of this factor of modesty. But it may fairly be argued that it
owes this position not merely to being the sexual centre, but also as
being the excretory centre. Even among many lower mammals, as well as
among birds and insects, there is a well-marked horror of dirt, somewhat
disguised by the varying ways in which an animal may be said to define
"dirt." Many animals spend more time and energy in the duties of
cleanliness than human beings, and they often show well-marked anxiety to
remove their own excrement, or to keep away from it.[35] Thus this element
of modesty also may be said to have an animal basis.
It is on this animal basis that the human and social fear of arousing
disgust has developed. Its probably wide extension is indicated not only
by the strong feeling attached to the constant presence of clothing on
this part of the body,--such constant presence being quite uncalled for if
the garment or ornament is merely a sort of sexual war-paint,--but by the
repugnance felt by many savages very low down in the scale to the public
satisfaction of natural needs, and to their more than civilized
cleanliness in this connection;[36] it is further of interest to note that
in some parts of the world the covering is not in front, but behind;
though of this fact there are probably other explanations. Among civilized
people, also, it may be added, the final and invincible seat of modesty is
sometimes not around the pubes, but the anus; that is to say, that in such
cases the fear of arousing disgust is the ultimate and most fundamental
element of modesty.[37]
The concentration of modesty around the anus is sometimes very
marked. Many women feel so high a degree of shame and reserve
with regard to this region, that they are comparatively
indifferent to an anterior examination of the sexual organs. A
similar feeling is not seldom found in men. "I would permit of an
examination of my genitals by a medical man, without any feeling
of discomfort," a correspondent writes, "but I think I would
rather die than submit to any rectal examination." Even
physicians have been known to endure painful rectal disorders for
years, rather than undergo examination.
"Among ordinary English girls," a medical correspondent writes,
"I have often noticed that the dislike and shame of allowing a
man to have sexual intercourse with them, when newly married, is
simply due to the fact that the sexual aperture is so closely
apposed to the anus and bladder. If the vulva and vagina were
situated between a woman's shoulder blades, and a man had a
separate instrument for coitus, not used for any excretory
purpose, I do not think women would feel about intercourse as
they sometimes do. Again, in their ignorance of anatomy, women
often look upon the vagina and womb as part of the bowel and its
exit of discharge, and sometimes say, for instance,
'inflammation of the _bowel_', when they mean _womb_. Again,
many, perhaps most, women believe that they pass water through
the vagina, and are ignorant of the existence of the separate
urethral orifice. Again, women associate the vulva with the anus,
and so feel ashamed of it; even when speaking to their husbands,
or to a doctor, or among themselves; they have absolutely no name
for the vulva (I mean among the upper classes, and people of
gentle birth), but speak of it as 'down below,' 'low down,' etc."
Even though this feeling is largely based on wrong and ignorant
ideas, it must still be recognized that it is to some extent
natural and inevitable. "How much is risked," exclaims Dugas, "in
the privacies of love! The results may be disillusion, disgust,
the consciousness of physical imperfection, of brutality or
coldness, of æsthetic disenchantment, of a sentimental shock,
seen or divined. To be without modesty, that is to say, to have
no fear of the ordeals of love, one must be sure of one's self,
of one's grace, of one's physical emotions, of one's feelings,
and be sure, moreover, of the effect of all these on the nerves,
the imagination, and the heart of another person. Let us suppose
modesty reduced to æsthetic discomfort, to a woman's fear of
displeasing, or of not seeming beautiful enough. Even thus
defined, how can modesty avoid being always awake and restless?
What woman could repeat, without risk, the tranquil action of
Phryne? And even in that action, who knows how much may not have
been due to mere professional insolence!" (Dugas, "La Pudeur,"
_Revue Philosophique_, November, 1903.) "Men and Women," Schurtz
points out (_Altersklassen und Männerbünde_, pp. 41-51), "have
certainly the capacity mutually to supplement and enrich each
other; but when this completion fails, or is not sought, the
difference may easily become a strong antipathy;" and he proceeds
to develop the wide-reaching significance of this psychic fact.
I have emphasized the proximity of the excretory centres to the sexual
focus in discussing this important factor of modesty, because, in
analyzing so complex and elusive an emotion as modesty it is desirable to
keep as near as possible to the essential and fundamental facts on which
it is based. It is scarcely necessary to point out that, in ordinary
civilized society, these fundamental facts are not usually present at the
surface of consciousness and may even be absent altogether; on the
foundation of them may arise all sorts of idealized fears, of delicate
reserves, of æsthetic refinements, as the emotions of love become more
complex and more subtle, and the crude simplicity of the basis on which
they finally rest becomes inevitably concealed.
Another factor of modesty, which reaches a high development in savagery,
is the ritual element, especially the idea of ceremonial uncleanness,
based on a dread of the supernatural influences which the sexual organs
and functions are supposed to exert. It may be to some extent rooted in
the elements already referred to, and it leads us into a much wider field
than that of modesty, so that it is only necessary to touch slightly on it
here; it has been exhaustively studied by Frazer and by Crawley. Offences
against the ritual rendered necessary by this mysterious dread, though
more serious than offences against sexual reticence or the fear of causing
disgust, are so obviously allied that they all reinforce one another and
cannot easily be disentangled.
Nearly everywhere all over the world at a primitive stage of thought, and
even to some extent in the highest civilization, the sight of the sexual
organs or of the sexual act, the image or even the names of the sexual
parts of either man or woman, are believed to have a curiously potent
influence, sometimes beneficent, but quite as often maleficent. The two
kinds of influence may even be combined, and Riedel, quoted by Ploss and
Bartels,[38] states that the Ambon islanders carve a schematic
representation of the vulva on their fruit trees, in part to promote the
productiveness of the trees, and in part to scare any unauthorized person
who might be tempted to steal the fruit. The precautions prescribed as
regards coitus at Loango[39] are evidently associated with religious
fears. In Ceylon, again (as a medical correspondent there informs me),
where the penis is worshipped and held sacred, a native never allows it to
be seen, except under compulsion, by a doctor, and even a wife must
neither see it nor touch it nor ask for coitus, though she must grant as
much as the husband desires. All savage and barbarous peoples who have
attained any high degree of ceremonialism have included the functions not
only of sex, but also of excretion, more or less stringently within the
bounds of that ceremonialism.[40] It is only necessary to refer to the
Jewish ritual books of the Old Testament, to Hesiod, and to the customs
prevalent among Mohammedan peoples. Modesty in eating, also, has its roots
by no means only in the fear of causing disgust, but very largely in this
kind of ritual, and Crawley has shown how numerous and frequent among
primitive peoples are the religious implications of eating and
drinking.[41] So profound is this dread of the sacred mystery of sex, and
so widespread is the ritual based upon it, that some have imagined that
here alone we may find the complete explanation of modesty, and Salomon
Reinach declares that "at the origin of the emotion of modesty lies a
taboo."[42]
Durkheim ("La Prohibition de l'Inceste," _L'Année Sociologique_,
1898, p. 50), arguing that whatever sense of repugnance women may
inspire must necessarily reach the highest point around the womb,
which is hence subjected to the most stringent taboo,
incidentally suggests that here is an origin of modesty. "The
sexual organs must be veiled at an early period, to prevent the
dangerous effluvia which they give off from reaching the
environment. The veil is often a method of intercepting magic
action. Once constituted, the practice would be maintained and
transformed."
It was doubtless as a secondary and derived significance that the
veil became, as Reinach ("Le Voile de l'Oblation," op. cit., pp.
299-311) shows it was, alike among the Romans and in the Catholic
Church, the sign of consecration to the gods.
At an early stage of culture, again, menstruation is regarded as a process
of purification, a dangerous expulsion of vitiated humors. Hence the term
_katharsis_ applied to it by the Greeks. Hence also the mediæval view of
women: "_Mulier speciosa templum ædificatum super cloacam_," said
Boethius. The sacro-pubic region in women, because it includes the source
of menstruation, thus becomes a specially heightened seat of taboo.
According to the Mosiac law (Leviticus, Chapter XX, v. 18), if a man
uncovered a menstruating woman, both were to be cut off.
It is probable that the Mohammedan custom of veiling the face and head
really has its source solely in another aspect of this ritual factor of
modesty. It must be remembered that this custom is not Mohammedan in its
origin, since it existed long previously among the Arabians, and is
described by Tertullian.[43] In early Arabia very handsome men also veiled
their faces, in order to preserve themselves from the evil eye, and it has
been conjectured with much probability that the origin of the custom of
women veiling their faces may be traced to this magico-religious
precaution.[44] Among the Jews of the same period, according to
Büchler,[45] the women had their heads covered and never cut their hair;
to appear in the streets without such covering would be like a prostitute
and was adequate ground for divorce; adulterous women were punished by
uncovering their heads and cutting their hair. It is possible, though not
certain, that St. Paul's obscure injunction to women to cover their heads
"because of the angels," may really be based on the ancient reason, that
when uncovered they would be exposed to the wanton assaults of spirits (1
Corinthians, Ch. XI, vv. 5-6),[46] exactly as Singhalese women believe
that they must keep the vulva covered lest demons should have intercourse
with them. Even at the present day St. Paul's injunction is still observed
by Christendom, which is, however, far from accepting, or even perhaps
understanding, the folk-lore ground on which are based such injunctions.
Crawley thus summarizes some of the evidence concerning the
significance of the veil:--
"Sexual shyness, not only in woman, but in man, is intensified at
marriage, and forms a chief feature of the dangerous sexual
properties mutually feared. When fully ceremonial, the idea takes
on the meaning that satisfaction of these feelings will lead to
their neutralization, as, in fact, it does. The bridegroom in
ancient Sparta supped on the wedding night at the men's mess, and
then visited his bride, leaving her before daybreak. This
practice was continued, and sometimes children were born before
the pair had ever seen each other's faces by day. At weddings in
the Babar Islands, the bridegroom has to hunt for his bride in a
darkened room. This lasts a good while if she is shy. In South
Africa, the bridegroom may not see his bride till the whole of
the marriage ceremonies have been performed. In Persia, a husband
never sees his wife till he has consummated the marriage. At
marriages in South Arabia, the bride and bridegroom have to sit
immovable in the same position from noon till midnight, fasting,
in separate rooms. The bride is attended by ladies, and the groom
by men. They may not see each other till the night of the fourth
day. In Egypt, the groom cannot see the face of his bride, even
by a surreptitious glance, till she is in his absolute
possession. Then comes the ceremony, which he performs, of
uncovering her face. In Egypt, of course, this has been
accentuated by the seclusion and veiling of women. In Morocco, at
the feast before the marriage, the bride and groom sit together
on a sort of throne; all the time, the poor bride's eyes are
firmly closed, and she sits amidst the revelry as immovable as a
statue. On the next day is the marriage. She is conducted after
dark to her future home, accompanied by a crowd with lanterns and
candles. She is led with closed eyes along the street by two
relatives, each holding one of her hands. The bride's head is
held in its proper position by a female relative, who walks
behind her. She wears a veil, and is not allowed to open her eyes
until she is set on the bridal bed, with a girl friend beside
her. Amongst the Zulus, the bridal party proceeds to the house of
the groom, having the bride hidden amongst them. They stand
facing the groom, while the bride sings a song. Her companions
then suddenly break away, and she is discovered standing in the
middle, with a fringe of beads covering her face. Amongst the
people of Kumaun, the husband sees his wife first after the
joining of hands. Amongst the Bedui of North East Africa, the
bride is brought on the evening of the wedding-day by her girl
friends, to the groom's house. She is closely muffled up. Amongst
the Jews of Jerusalem, the bride, at the marriage ceremony,
stands under the nuptial canopy, her eyes being closed, that she
may not behold the face of her future husband before she reaches
the bridal chamber. In Melanesia, the bride is carried to her new
home on some one's back, wrapped in many mats, with palm-fans
held about her face, because she is supposed to be modest and
shy. Among the Damaras, the groom cannot see his bride for four
days after marriage. When a Damara woman is asked in marriage,
she covers her face for a time with the flap of a headdress made
for this purpose. At the Thlinkeet marriage ceremony, the bride
must look down, and keep her head bowed all the time; during the
wedding-day, she remains hiding in a corner of the house, and the
groom is forbidden to enter. At a Yezedee marriage, the bride is
covered from head to foot with a thick veil, and when arrived at
her new home, she retires behind a curtain in the corner of a
darkened room, where she remains for three days before her
husband is permitted to see her. In Corea, the bride has to cover
her face with her long sleeves, when meeting the bridegroom at
the wedding. The Manchurian bride uncovers her face for the first
time when she descends from the nuptial couch. It is dangerous
even to see dangerous persons. Sight is a method of contagion in
primitive science, and the idea coincides with the psychological
aversion to see dangerous things, and with sexual shyness and
timidity. In the customs noticed, we can distinguish the feeling
that it is dangerous to the bride for her husband's eyes to be
upon her, and the feeling of bashfulness in her which induces her
neither to see him nor to be seen by him. These ideas explain the
origin of the bridal veil and similar concealments. The bridal
veil is used, to take a few instances, in China, Burmah, Corea,
Russia, Bulgaria, Manchuria, and Persia, and in all these cases
it conceals the face entirely." (E. Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_,
pp. 328 et seq.)
Alexander Walker, writing in 1846, remarks: "Among old-fashioned
people, of whom a good example may be found in old country people
of the middle class in England, it is indecent to be seen with
the head unclothed; such a woman is terrified at the chance of
being seen In that condition, and if intruded on at that time,
she shrieks with terror, and flies to conceal herself." (A.
Walker, _Beauty_, p. 15.) This fear of being seen with the head
uncovered exists still, M. Van Gennep informs me, in some regions
of France, as in Brittany.
So far it has only been necessary to refer incidentally to the connection
of modesty with clothing. I have sought to emphasize the unquestionable,
but often forgotten, fact that modesty is in its origin independent of
clothing, that physiological modesty takes precedence of anatomical
modesty, and that the primary factors of modesty were certainly developed
long before the discovery of either ornament or garments. The rise of
clothing probably had its first psychical basis on an emotion of modesty
already compositely formed of the elements we have traced. Both the main
elementary factors, it must be noted, must naturally tend to develop and
unite in a more complex, though--it may well be--much less intense,
emotion. The impulse which leads the female animal, as it leads some
African women when found without their girdles, to squat firmly down on
the earth, becomes a more refined and extended play of gesture and
ornament and garment. A very notable advance, I may remark, is made when
this primary attitude of defence against the action of the male becomes a
defence against his eyes. We may thus explain the spread of modesty to
various parts of the body, even when we exclude the more special influence
of the evil eye. The breasts very early become a focus of modesty in
women; this may be observed among many naked, or nearly naked, negro
races; the tendency of the nates to become the chief seat of modesty in
many parts of Africa may probably be, in large part, thus explained, since
the full development of the gluteal regions is often the greatest
attraction an African woman can possess.[47] The same cause contributes,
doubtless, to the face becoming, in some races, the centre of modesty. We
see the influence of this defence against strange eyes in the special
precautions in gesture or clothing taken by the women in various parts of
the world, against the more offensive eyes of civilized Europeans.
But in thus becoming directed only against sight, and not against action,
the gestures of modesty are at once free to become merely those of
coquetry. When there is no real danger of offensive action, there is no
need for more than playful defence, and no serious anxiety should that
defence be taken as a disguised invitation. Thus the road is at once fully
open toward the most civilized manifestations of the comedy of courtship.
In the same way the social fear of arousing disgust combines easily and
perfectly with any new development in the invention of ornament or
clothing as sexual lures. Even among the most civilized races it has often
been noted that the fashion of feminine garments (as also sometimes the
use of scents) has the double object of concealing and attracting. It is
so with the little apron of the young savage belle. The heightening of the
attraction is, indeed, a logical outcome of the fear of evoking disgust.
It is possible, as some ethnographists have observed,[48] that intercrural
cords and other primitive garments have a physical ground, inasmuch as
they protect the most sensitive and unprotected part of the body,
especially in women. We may note in this connection the significant
remarks of K. von den Steinen, who argues that among Brazilian tribes the
object of the _uluri_, etc., is to obtain a maximum of protection for the
mucous membrane with a minimum of concealment. Among the Eskimo, as Nansen
noted, the corresponding intercrural cord is so thin as to be often
practically invisible; this may be noted, I may add, in the excellent
photographs of Eskimo women given by Holm.
But it is evident that, in the beginning, protection is to little or no
extent the motive for attaching foreign substances to the body. Thus the
tribes of Central Australia wear no clothes, although they often suffer
from the cold. But, in addition to armlets, neck-bands and head-bands,
they have string or hair girdles, with, for the women, a very small apron
and, for the men, a pubic tassel. The latter does not conceal the organs,
being no larger than a coin, and often brilliantly coated with white
pipeclay, especially during the progress of _corrobborees_, when a large
number of men and women meet together; it serves the purpose of drawing
attention to the organs.[49] When Forster visited the unspoilt islanders
of the Pacific early in the eighteenth century, he tells us that, though
they wore no clothes, they found it necessary to cover themselves with
various ornaments, especially on, the sexual parts. "But though their
males," he remarks, "were to all appearances equally anxious in this
respect with their females, this part of their dress served only to make
that more conspicuous which it intended to hide."[50] He adds the
significant remark that "these ideas of decency and modesty are only
observed at the age of sexual maturity," just as in Central Australia
women may only wear aprons after the initiation of puberty.
"There are certain things," said Montaigne, "which are hidden in order to
be shown;" and there can be no doubt that the contention of Westermarck
and others, that ornament and clothing were, in the first place, intended,
not to conceal or even to protect the body, but, in large part, to render
it sexually attractive, is fully proved.[51] We cannot, in the light of
all that has gone before, regard ornaments and clothing as the sole cause
of modesty, but the feelings that are thus gathered around the garment
constitute a highly important factor of modesty.
Among some Australian tribes it is said that the sexual organs
are only covered during their erotic dances; and it is further
said that in some parts of the world only prostitutes are
clothed. "The scanty covering," as Westermarck observes, "was
found to act as the most powerful obtainable sexual stimulus." It
is undoubtedly true that this statement may be made not merely of
the savage, but of the most civilized world. All observers agree
that the complete nudity of savages, unlike the civilized
_décolleté_ or _détroussé_, has no suggestion of sexual
allurement. (Westermarck quotes numerous testimonies on this
point, op. cit., pp. 192 et seq.) Dr. R.W. Felkin remarks
concerning Central Africa, that he has never met more indecency
than in Uganda, where the penalty of death is inflicted on an
adult found naked in the street. (_Edinburgh Medical Journal_,
April, 1884.) A study of pictures or statuary will alone serve to
demonstrate that nakedness is always chaster in its effects than
partial clothing. As a well-known artist, Du Maurier, has
remarked (in _Trilby_), it is "a fact well known to all painters
and sculptors who have used the nude model (except a few shady
pretenders, whose purity, not being of the right sort, has gone
rank from too much watching) that nothing is so chaste as nudity.
Venus herself, as she drops her garments and steps on to the
model-throne, leaves behind her on the floor every weapon in her
armory by which she can pierce to the grosser passions of men."
Burton, in the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (Part III, Sect. II,
Subsect. 3), deals at length with the "Allurements of Love," and
concludes that "the greatest provocations of lust are from our
apparel." The artist's model, as one informs me, is much less
exposed to liberties from men when nude than when she is
partially clothed, and it may be noted that in Paris studios the
model who poses naked undresses behind a screen.
An admirable poetic rendering of this element in the philosophy
of clothing has been given by Herrick, that master of erotic
psychology, in "A Lily in Crystal," where he argues that a lily
in crystal, and amber in a stream, and strawberries in cream,
gain an added delight from semi-concealment; and so, he
concludes, we obtain
"A rule, how far, to teach,
Your nakedness must reach."
In this connection, also, it is worth noting that Stanley Hall,
in a report based on returns from nearly a thousand persons,
mostly teachers, ("The Early Sense of Self," _American Journal of
Psychology_, 1898, p. 366), finds that of the three functions of
clothes--protection, ornament, and Lotzean "self-feeling"--the
second is by far the most conspicuous in childhood. The attitude
of children is testimony to the primitive attitude toward
clothing.
It cannot, however, be said that the use of clothing for the sake
of showing the natural forms of the body has everywhere been
developed. In Japan, where nakedness is accepted without shame,
clothes are worn to cover and conceal, and not to reveal, the
body. It is so, also, in China. A distinguished Chinese
gentleman, who had long resided in Europe, once told Baelz that
he had gradually learnt to grasp the European point of view, but
that it would be impossible to persuade his fellow-countrymen
that a woman who used her clothes to show off her figure could
possibly possess the least trace of modesty. (Baelz, _Zeitschrift
für Ethnologie_, 1901, Heft 2, p. 179.)
The great artistic elaboration often displayed by articles of ornament or
clothing, even when very small, and the fact--as shown by Karl von den
Steinen regarding the Brazilian _uluri_--that they may serve as common
motives in general decoration, sufficiently prove that such objects
attract rather than avoid attention. And while there is an invincible
repugnance among some peoples to remove these articles, such repugnance
being often strongest when the adornment is most minute, others have no
such repugnance or are quite indifferent whether or not their aprons are
accurately adjusted. The mere presence or possession of the article gives
the required sense of self-respect, of human dignity, of sexual
desirability. Thus it is that to unclothe a person, is to humiliate him;
this was so even in Homeric times, for we may recall the threat of
Ulysses to strip Thyestes.[52]
When clothing is once established, another element, this time a
social-economic element, often comes in to emphasize its importance and
increase the anatomical modesty of women. I mean the growth of the
conception of women as property. Waitz, followed by Schurtz and
Letourneau, has insisted that the jealousy of husbands is the primary
origin of clothing, and, indirectly, of modesty. Diderot in the eighteenth
century had already given clear expression to the same view. It is
undoubtedly true that only married women are among some peoples clothed,
the unmarried women, though full grown, remaining naked. In many parts of
the world, also, as Mantegazza and others have shown, where the men are
naked and the women covered, clothing is regarded as a sort of disgrace,
and men can only with difficulty be persuaded to adopt it. Before marriage
a woman was often free, and not bound to chastity, and at the same time
was often naked; after marriage she was clothed, and no longer free. To
the husband's mind, the garment appears--illogically, though naturally--a
moral and physical protection against any attack on his property.[53] Thus
a new motive was furnished, this time somewhat artificially, for making
nakedness, in women at all events, disgraceful. As the conception of
property also extended to the father's right over his daughters, and the
appreciation of female chastity developed, this motive spread to unmarried
as well as married women. A woman on the west coast of Africa must always
be chaste because she is first the property of her parents and afterwards
of her husband,[54] and even in the seventeenth century of Christendom so
able a thinker as Bishop Burnet furnished precisely the same reason for
feminine chastity.[55] This conception probably constituted the chief and
most persistent element furnished to the complex emotion of modesty by the
barbarous stages of human civilization.
This economic factor necessarily involved the introduction of a new moral
element into modesty. If a woman's chastity is the property of another
person, it is essential that she shall be modest in order that men may not
be tempted to incur the penalties involved by the infringement of property
rights. Thus modesty is strictly inculcated on women in order that men may
be safeguarded from temptation. The fact was overlooked that modesty is
itself a temptation. Immodesty being, on this ground, disapproved by men,
a new motive for modesty is furnished to women. In the book which the
Knight of the Tower, Landry, wrote in the fourteenth century, for the
instruction of his daughters, this factor of modesty is naïvely revealed.
He tells his daughters of the trouble that David got into through the
thoughtlessness of Bathsheba, and warns them that "every woman ought
religiously to conceal herself when dressing and washing, and neither out
of vanity nor yet to attract attention show either her hair, or her neck,
or her breast, or any part which ought to be covered." Hinton went so far
as to regard what he termed "body modesty," as entirely a custom imposed
upon women by men with the object of preserving their own virtue. While
this motive is far from being the sole source of modesty, it must
certainly be borne in mind as an inevitable outcome of the economic factor
of modesty.
In Europe it seems probable that the generally accepted conceptions of
mediæval chivalry were not without influence in constituting the forms in
which modesty shows itself among us. In the early middle ages there seems
to have been a much greater degree of physical familiarity between the
sexes than is commonly found among barbarians elsewhere. There was
certainly considerable promiscuity in bathing and indifference to
nakedness. It seems probable, as Durkheim points out,[56] that this state
of things was modified in part by the growing force of the dictates of
Christian morality, which regarded all intimate approaches between the
sexes as sinful, and in part by the influence of chivalry with its
æsthetic and moral ideals of women, as the representative of all the
delicacies and elegancies of civilization. This ideal was regarded as
incompatible with the familiarities of the existing social relationships
between the sexes, and thus a separation, which at first existed only in
art and literature, began by a curious reaction to exert an influence on
real life.
The chief new feature--it is scarcely a new element--added to modesty when
an advanced civilization slowly emerges from barbarism is the elaboration
of its social ritual.[57] Civilization expands the range of modesty, and
renders it, at the same time, more changeable. The French seventeenth
century, and the English eighteenth, represent early stages of modern
European civilization, and they both devoted special attention to the
elaboration of the minute details of modesty. The frequenters of the Hotel
Rambouillet, the _précieuses_ satirized by Molière, were not only engaged
in refining the language; they were refining feelings and ideas and
enlarging the boundaries of modesty.[58] In England such famous and
popular authors as Swift and Sterne bear witness to a new ardor of modesty
in the sudden reticences, the dashes, and the asterisks, which are found
throughout their works. The altogether new quality of literary prurience,
of which Sterne is still the classical example, could only have arisen on
the basis of the new modesty which was then overspreading society and
literature. Idle people, mostly, no doubt, the women in _salons_ and
drawing-rooms, people more familiar with books than with the realities of
life, now laid down the rules of modesty, and were ever enlarging it, ever
inventing new subtleties of gesture and speech, which it would be immodest
to neglect, and which are ever being rendered vulgar by use and ever
changing.
It was at this time, probably, that the custom of inventing an
arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose
of disguising references to functions and parts of the body
regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common.
Such private slang, growing up independently in families, and
especially among women, as well as between lovers, is now almost
universal. It is not confined to any European country, and has
been studied in Italy by Niceforo (_Il Gergo_, 1897, cap. 1 and
2), who regards it as a weapon of social defence against an
inquisitive or hostile environment, since it enables things to be
said with a meaning which is unintelligible to all but the
initiated person. While it is quite true that the custom is
supported by the consciousness of its practical advantages, it
has another source in a desire to avoid what is felt to be the
vulgar immodesty of direct speech. This is sufficiently shown by
the fact that such slang is mostly concerned with the sacro-pubic
sphere. It is one of the chief contributions to the phenomena of
modesty furnished by civilization. The claims of modesty having
effected the clothing of the body, the impulse of modesty finds a
further sphere of activity--half-playful, yet wholly
imperative--in the clothing of language.
Modesty of speech has, however, a deep and primitive basis,
although in modern Europe it only became conspicuous at the
beginning of the eighteenth century. "All over the world," as
Dufour put it, "to do is good, to say is bad." Reticences of
speech are not adequately accounted for by the statement that
modesty tends to irradiate from the action to the words
describing the action, for there is a tendency for modesty to be
more deeply rooted in the words than in the actions. "Modest
women," as Kleinpaul truly remarks, "have a much greater horror
of saying immodest things than of doing them; they believe that
fig-leaves were especially made for the mouth." (Kleinpaul,
_Sprache ohne Worte_, p. 309.) It is a tendency which is linked
on to the religious and ritual feeling which we have already
found to be a factor of modesty, and which, even when applied to
language, appears to have an almost or quite instinctive basis,
for it is found among the most primitive savages, who very
frequently regard a name as too sacred or dangerous to utter.
Among the tribes of Central Australia, in addition to his
ordinary name, each individual has his sacred or secret name,
only known to the older and fully initiated members of his own
totemic group; among the Warramunga, it is not permitted to women
to utter even a man's ordinary name, though she knows it.
(Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.
581.) In the mysterious region of sex, this feeling easily takes
root. In many parts of the world, men use among themselves, and
women use among themselves, words and even languages which they
may not use without impropriety in speaking to persons of the
opposite sex, and it has been shown that exogamy, or the fact
that the wife belongs to a different tribe, will not always
account for this phenomenon. (Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, p. 46.)
A special vocabulary for the generative organs and functions is
very widespread. Thus, in northwest Central Queensland, there is
both a decent and an indecent vocabulary for the sexual parts; in
Mitakoodi language, for instance, _me-ne_ may be used for the
vulva in the best aboriginal society, but _koon-ja_ and _pukkil_,
which are names for the same parts, are the most blackguardly
words known to the natives. (W. Roth, _Ethnological Studies Among
the Queensland Aborigines_, p. 184.) Among the Malays, _puki_ is
also a name for the vulva which it is very indecent to utter, and
it is only used in public by people under the influence of an
obsessive nervous disorder. (W. Gilman Ellis, "Latah," _Journal
of Mental Science_, Jan., 1897.) The Swahili women of Africa have
a private metaphorical language of their own, referring to sexual
matters (Zache, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1899, Heft 2-3, pp.
70 et seq.), and in Samoa, again, young girls have a euphemistic
name for the penis, _aualuma_, which is not that in common use
(_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1899, Heft 1, p. 31); exactly the
same thing is found in Europe, to-day, and is sometimes more
marked among young peasant women than among those of better
social class, who often avoid, under all circumstances, the
necessity for using any definite name.
Singular as it may seem, the Romans, who in their literature
impress us by their vigorous and naked grip of the most private
facts of life, showed in familiar intercourse a dread of obscene
language--a dread ultimately founded, it is evident, on religious
grounds--far exceeding that which prevails among ourselves to-day
in civilization. "It is remarkable," Dufour observes, "that the
prostitutes of ancient Rome would have blushed to say an indecent
word in public. The little tender words used between lovers and
their mistresses were not less correct and innocent when the
mistress was a courtesan and the lover an erotic poet. He called
her his rose, his queen, his goddess, his dove, his light, his
star, and she replied by calling him her jewel, her honey, her
bird, her ambrosia, the apple of her eye, and never with any
licentious interjection, but only 'I will love!' (_Amabo_), a
frequent exclamation, summing up a whole life and vocation. When
intimate relations began, they treated each other as 'brother'
and 'sister.' These appellations were common among the humblest
and the proudest courtesans alike." (Dufour, _Histoire de la
Prostitution_, vol. ii, p. 78.) So excessive was the Roman horror
of obscenity that even physicians were compelled to use a
euphemism for _urina_, and though the _urinal_ or _vas urinarium_
was openly used at the dining-table (following a custom
introduced by the Sybarites, according to Athenæus, Book XII,
cap. 17), the decorous guest could not ask for it by name, but
only by a snap of the fingers (Dufour, op. cit., vol. ii, p.
174).
In modern Europe, as seems fairly evident from the early
realistic dramatic literature of various countries, no special
horror of speaking plainly regarding the sacro-pubic regions and
their functions existed among the general population until the
seventeenth century. There is, however, one marked exception.
Such a feeling clearly existed as regards menstruation. It is not
difficult to see why it should have begun at this function. We
have here not only a function confined to one sex and, therefore,
easily lending itself to a vocabulary confined to one sex; but,
what is even of more importance, the belief which existed among
the Romans, as elsewhere throughout the world, concerning the
specially dangerous and mysterious properties of menstruation,
survived throughout mediæval times. (See e.g., Ploss and Bartels,
_Das Weib_, Bd. I, XIV; also Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_,
fourth ed. Ch. XI.) The very name, _menses_ ("monthlies"), is a
euphemism, and most of the old scientific names for this function
are similarly vague. As regards popular feminine terminology
previous to the eighteenth century, Schurig gives us fairly ample
information (_Parthenologia_, 1729, pp. 27 et seq.). He remarks
that both in Latin and Germanic countries, menstruation was
commonly designated by some term equivalent to "flowers,"
because, he says, it is a blossoming that indicates the
possibility of fruit. German peasant women, he tells us, called
it the rose-wreath (Rosenkrantz). Among the other current
feminine names for menstruation which he gives, some are purely
fanciful; thus, the Italian women dignified the function with the
title of "marchese magnifico;" German ladies, again, would use
the locution, "I have had a letter," or would say that their
cousin or aunt had arrived. These are closely similar to the
euphemisms still used by women.
It should be added that euphemisms for menstruation are not
confined to Europe, and are found among savages. According to
Hill Tout (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1904, p.
320; and 1905, p. 137), one of these euphemisms was "putting on
the moccasin," and in another branch of the same people, "putting
the knees together," "going outside" (in allusion to the
customary seclusion at this period in a solitary hut), and so on.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this process is an
intensification of modesty. It is, on the contrary, an attenuation of it.
The observances of modesty become merely a part of a vast body of rules of
social etiquette, though a somewhat stringent part on account of the vague
sense still persisting of a deep-lying natural basis. It is a significant
coincidence that the eighteenth century, which was marked by this new
extension of the social ritual of modesty, also saw the first appearance
of a new philosophic impulse not merely to analyze, but to dissolve the
conception of modesty. This took place more especially in France.
The swift rise to supremacy, during the seventeenth century, of logical
and rational methods of thinking, in conjunction with the new development
of geometrical and mathematical science, led in the eighteenth century to
a widespread belief in France that human customs and human society ought
to be founded on a strictly logical and rational basis. It was a belief
which ignored those legitimate claims of the emotional nature which the
nineteenth century afterwards investigated and developed, but it was of
immense service to mankind in clearing away useless prejudices and
superstitions, and it culminated in the reforms of the great Revolution
which most other nations have since been painfully struggling to attain.
Modesty offered a tempting field for the eighteenth century philosophic
spirit to explore.
The manner in which the most distinguished and adventurous minds of the
century approached it, can scarcely be better illustrated than by a
conversation, reported by Madame d'Epinay, which took place in 1750 at the
table of Mlle. Quinault, the eminent actress. "A fine virtue," Duclos
remarked, "which one fastens on in the morning with pins." He proceeded to
argue that "a moral law must hold good always and everywhere, which
modesty does not." Saint-Lambert, the poet, observed that "it must be
acknowledged that one can say nothing good about innocence without being a
little corrupted," and Duclos added "or of modesty without being
impudent." Saint-Lambert finally held forth with much poetic enthusiasm
concerning the desirability of consummating marriages in public.[59] This
view of modesty, combined with the introduction of Greek fashions, gained
ground to such an extent that towards the end of the century women, to the
detriment of their health, were sometimes content to dress in transparent
gauze, and even to walk abroad in the Champs Elysées without any clothing;
that, however, was too much for the public.[60] The final outcome of the
eighteenth century spirit in this direction was, as we know, by no means
the dissolution of modesty. But it led to a clearer realization of what is
permanent in its organic foundations and what is merely temporary in its
shifting manifestations. That is a realization which is no mean task to
achieve, and is difficult for many, even yet. So intelligent a traveler as
Mrs. Bishop (Miss Bird), on her first visit to Japan came to the
conclusion that Japanese women had no modesty, because they had no
objection to being seen naked when bathing. Twenty years later she
admitted to Dr. Baelz that she had made a mistake, and that "a woman may
be naked and yet behave like a lady."[61] In civilized countries the
observances of modesty differ in different regions, and in different
social classes, but, however various the forms may be, the impulse itself
remains persistent.[62]
Modesty has thus come to have the force of a tradition, a vague but
massive force, bearing with special power on those who cannot reason, and
yet having its root in the instincts of all people of all classes.[63] It
has become mainly transformed into the allied emotion of decency, which
has been described as "modesty fossilized into social customs." The
emotion yields more readily than in its primitive state to any
sufficiently-strong motive. Even fashion in the more civilized countries
can easily inhibit anatomical modesty, and rapidly exhibit or accentuate,
in turn, almost any part of the body, while the savage Indian woman of
America, the barbarous woman of some Mohammedan countries, can scarcely
sacrifice her modesty in the pangs of childbirth. Even when, among
uncivilized races, the focus of modesty may be said to be eccentric and
arbitrary, it still remains very rigid. In such savage and barbarous
countries modesty possesses the strength of a genuine and irresistible
instinct. In civilized countries, however, anyone who places
considerations of modesty before the claims of some real human need
excites ridicule and contempt.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Fliess (_Die Beziehungen zwischen Nase und weiblichen
Geschlechts-Organen_, p. 194) remarks on the fact that, in the Bible
narrative of Eden, shame and fear are represented as being brought into
the world together: Adam feared God because he was naked. Melinaud
("Psychologie de la Pudeur," _La Revue_, Nov. 15, 1901) remarks that shame
differs from modesty in being, not a fear, but a kind of grief; this
position seems untenable.
[5] Bashfulness in children has been dealt with by Professor Baldwin; see
especially his _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, Chapter VI,
pp. 146 et seq., and _Social Interpretations in Mental Development_,